Anyone who has a car in a major city knows the pain of parking – it can hit your wallet if you often get tickets, or it can cause you to spend a lot of time searching.
INRIX Research, a transportation analytics company, released a report this week that looks at exactly how much parking woes cost Americans each year.
On average, Americans spend 17 hours a year searching for parking, the report found – but for those in major cities, of course, that figure is much higher.
New York came in at No. 1 in terms of time spent trying to find a spot, with residents there spending 107 hours a year searching for a space. That’s about four and a half days per year set aside just for parking.
And that chore doesn’t only cost drivers hours, according to the report, but also costs them money in terms of wasted work time, fuel and emissions.
Those 107 hours annually spent trying to park in New York translate into an average of $2,243 per driver, or $4.3 billion in costs to the city as a whole, according to INRIX.
Los Angeles came in second in terms of cities seeing the most parking challenges, with drivers there losing 85 hours and $1,785 per year to parking attempts.
San Francisco followed closely behind with Washington, D.C., and Seattle rounding out the top five cities with the most time-consuming parking. Boston appeared lower on the list in the seventh spot, with 53 hours and $1,111 a year lost to parking, and Detroit closed out the top 10 with drivers there spending 35 hours and $731.
“Our country’s parking pain has widespread impact – on drivers, cities, the economy and the environment,” said Bob Pishue, a senior economist at INRIX, in a statement.
Because drivers know that finding parking will be a struggle, it keeps them from venturing out to explore shops and entertainment activities, which further harms the economy, the report found.
And, as anyone who’s tried to park before a blizzard knows all too well, the stress of finding a space also leads to arguments with other drivers. In the U.S., one-third of male drivers reported having been in a confrontation with another driver over a parking spot within the past year.
See the full report here.
